It's more like a marathon, sure you're in a race but people don't really care about your position in it unless you're near the front. Completing it on its own gives a feeling of achievement
You should consider adding DNS checks prior to WHOIS. Whois is unreliable and you can be quickly blocked, doing a quick SOA DNS request can help reduce your WHOIS queries when the domain definitely exists (no SOA is not enough to confirm domain is unregistered but existing SOA is enough to confirm a domain is registered)
I don't think a banks email being there indicates they use the service, more likely a customer of theirs uses TeleMessage and as a result the comms between that bank customer and the bank are in the breach
"Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007"
This is not whats represented in the source you cited?
In the graph titled "Top 10% and Bottom 50% Wealth Shares in The UK 1900-2020" you can clearly see the wealth owned by the top 10% increased from 54.4% in 2007 to 57% in 2020 and likely even higher now 5 years later.
Yes, that's only a 2.6% increase. I don't think it's unfair to call that "roughly where it was".
In fact, according to that chart wealth inequality today is much lower than it was in the 1970s, although it increased throughout the 1990s.
The same link shows that the UK has unremarkable wealth inequality by the standards of developed countries: we're bang in the middle of the OECD, with lower levels of wealth inequality than Sweden, Denmark, Finland or Norway. (That's funny, I thought the Nordics were egalitarian utopias?)
I'm not saying that wealth inequality is low, or that it's not a problem. I'm merely responding to the claim that "wealth inequality is through the roof", which I take to mean that wealth inequality has increased substantially in recent years. As far as I can tell that's not true.
Personally I think we need more economic growth, not more taxes. We already have the highest taxes since WWII, soon to be the highest taxes in the entire history of the UK, and all it's doing is strangling the economy and making productive people flee.
Look, I'm not gonna dispute that the tax system is messed up in the UK (Student loans, the cutting off of credits at 100k and the lack of a real property tax) but fundamentally as a society ye blew mineral wealth on tax cuts then removed yourselves from a giant trading bloc, so the lack of services and higher tax rates are unsurprising.
Ultimately though, tax on income should be lowered and tax on property should be proportionately increased, given that property is the source of much wealth and is very difficult to hide or move.
The voting system (FPTP) in the US results in a two party system which isn't representative of a good democratic system imo. Considering all of the different political divides I don't think two parties sufficiently cover the spectrum of opinions/stances.
> voting system (FPTP) in the US results in a two party system which isn't representative of a good democratic system imo
We have non-FPTP jurisdictions. They still default to partisanship. (The problem is probably too many elections, not enough reliance on appointment and selection by lot.)
